Recently Rated Movies #51: Are We Not Men?

Devo: The Complete Truth About De-Evolution
Directors: Chuck Statler, Gerald Casale, various // Rhino, 2004 [DVD]
Cinema 4 Rating: 7

Br'er Otis will tell you with great pride of the moment when my young nephew Aerin, then only five years old, looked up from his pile of toys and childhood ephemera and declared, "You know what, Poppa? I love Devo." Clearly, when you add his youthful devotion (no pun intended) to the Clash, the boy is being raised in the right environment. Aerin's joy in being a spud boy has also inspired me to concentrate on playing catch up with the band over the last year or so. Having the first five albums on vinyl would help me in that effort, except that my LPs are stuck in Idaho, as is my turntable. I was lucky in that I had two of those records on CD, but some of my favorite songs were on the albums far out of my reach. Even getting a greatest hits collection didn't help much, so I am going to have to do some digging to get the rest. Or wait until my stuff gets here in September. (My dad and I are roadtripping it via U-Haul. A very full U-haul...)

So, my De-Vival had to consist of listening to about 30 songs over and over and over and over (talk about jerking back and forth)... and renting this video collection a couple of times. I will be honest and tell you that visually, the videos on this collection are going to look tremendously cheesy to a modern eye, especially someone not familiar with the style or the band. They definitely hearken back to the pre-MTV days of music videos, but in Devo's case, they were most certainly the pioneers in this realm, and anyone into the corporation even just one song beyond Whip It are going to love this. For me, who sincerely accepts Devo's assertion that all humanoid civilization is destined to regress to a primordial state, it was a great way to catch up with some material that I haven't seen in over twenty years (in some cases), including their amazing introductory film, The Truth About De-Evolution, which I believe that I saw back in the day on something like The Midnight Special. (I certainly saw it on Night Flight on USA in the '80s, but I remember seeing it before that show.) This Booji Boy never had it so good (and I can actually use that term, for those of you who know my nickname) as when he dug back into these archives. But while the band exists to this day, and even have been on and off the tour circuit recently, their recording career pretty much died in 1990 after an unhealthy bout with Enigma Records. On the commentary track by founders Mark Mothersbaugh and Gerald Casale, they sound absolutely fired up when discussing this period, and while the disc starts out as fun and games (even while sharply deriding the culture about them), this attitude definitely runs into its own form of devolution the farther along the videos get. It certainly colors the experience in some rather dark hues.

Since I watched this disc, the Spud Boys have been played nearly nonstop on my iPod. And now, I have the missing trio of the those first five albums lined up on Amazon. It seems to me I looked on there a couple of years ago for New Traditionalists, but they only had it as a dual-package (two LPs crammed hideously onto one CD) with Duty Now for the Future. Since I have messed with discs of such possibly sinister quality in the past, I decided to skip on the purchase, and even checked eBay to locate full single CDs of the albums. Now, apparently the albums are available quite readily on Amazon, and though I never heard they were being reissued (they certainly do not appear to have any extra tracks in the modern tradition of re-releasing remastered versions of albums), I for one will not be missing out on this opportunity. If it will stop my own regression into what much of the world has already achieved, it is a step that I must take.

It's a good thing we got to Aerin at an early age...

Major Studio Longs to Meet Quote Whore; Happy Ending at Box Office A Must

When you see a movie poster, do you really read any of the blurbs which might appear on it? I don't mean scanning the brief words that appear, such as "A thrilling ride!" or "Incredible!" I mean do you read the other words? Do you check out who may have said those words? Do you check to see if the review came from the pen of a credentialed and notable reviewer from the likes of The New York Times or Newsweek, or if it actually came from something like the Poughkeepsie Daily Shitbird, where the reviewers are so anxious that they will shill for even the worst piece of crap if it will get them more notice (and perhaps some fringe bennies). I'm not saying it's a form of critical payola -- I'm just saying... Amazingly, if a studio can't get a recognized big-time publication to give their flick a reach-around, they will find some tiny corner of the web or an obscure station in the middle of Ohio to do the dirty work. It's the magic of Hollywood.

There is no such publication as the Shitbird (obviously), but it serves the purpose well here. All the studio cares is that you pick up on the word "Incredible!" and it screws straight back to your brain through your eyes and wedges there, pulsing almost subliminally until the moment that the movie is released and then it pops up in your memory, reminding you that this movie simply can't be missed. But if you were to do an analysis of the actual review from whence the word "Incredible" sprang forth, you might find one of a couple possibilities.

If the word came from a review by a chintzy fly-by-night operation like the Shitbird, then it is likely a hack job by a barely credible individual who is given what credence he has by sole fact that he works for a newspaper... any newspaper. The studio has possibly flown him to a press junket in a major city to gather his most likely insincere endorsement of their film. And the studio doesn't want you to actually realize his newspaper is the Shitbird; they just want you to remember the word from the review that inspires you to slap down your hard-earned $10.50 on the counter at the theatre. However, they do have to put the name of the Shitbird on there to keep things on the up and up; they just put it in incredibly small print in the hopes that you won't notice the source at all. And if the word "Incredible!" actually came from, say, the Times or its ilk, then the studios do want you to remember the paper from which the quote was derived. But, there still exists the chance that they don't really want you to check out the real review, because they may have grabbed "Incredible!" from a statement such as, "An incredible waste of time!" It's the old quote-out-of-context thing, and it happens from time to time.

Or, of pressed and desperate, the studio can simply invent their own critic. Sounds simple enough; I don't know why more studios haven't tried it. Oh! I know why: it can backfire on them, in ways far beyond people realizing in advance they are being duped by a corporate slickster. Columbia Pictures invented their own critic, David Manning, to give good reviews to many of their films in the early '00s. They ended up getting sued and had to give a large, though probably not large enough, sum back to complaining moviegoers who wanted their money back. (Hey, I saw many of the films involved in the suit, and I was never asked to join it! Of course, I did join that CD rebate thing against the music biz a few years back and I never saw my $5... so what's the use? These people, and we the people, will never learn anything. The new boss is the same as the old boss, and we will always get fooled again. Sorry, Pete...)

But, whether it is a real review or not, and no matter how legit the source of the review, it really comes down to this: do you really know any of these reviewers? You might like Ebert and Roeper's show (I do), but do you actually know them? You can get a cursory sense of how they are in real life, but you can read thousands of Ebert's reviews (I have) and still not know a whole lot about him personally. He writes like most reviewers write: from a supposedly centered and professional balance, and only allow the most fleeting glimpses regarding their past experiences into their writing. If you don't know someone personally, can you really trust their opinion on something? For a small selection of people, knowing someone like Ebert is an educated expert on their subject might be enough.

When there is a new movie out about which you are deliberating on going, whose opinion do you trust the most: that of a published critic in your local paper, or that of someone from your inner circle of friends? Or is it perhaps a member of your family? Most people that I know listen more to the opinions of their immediate influences than that gained from a review from a media phantom in a newspaper or on television. And they treasure these opinions most because they have first-hand knowledge of the lives of these people. They know what these persons like and dislike, and even if they hate something in which that person is interested, they might go see it anyway because they understand that person has a particular prejudice against that genre, filmmaker or actor. You use what you know about what they know to determine your next move.

You can do this with critics with whom you have gained some familiarity, but it is a harder act to do. I, too, have gone to films that Ebert has panned, simply because I know he is wishy-washy on certain genres, but more often, I have gone to films he has championed (often smaller films) because he has a very sharp and discerning eye in other genres. This is because I have been reading his words for over twenty years, and have formed at least a basic idea of him as he is as a person in real life. But Ebert is perhaps the most prominently public of film critics; it is easier to form this basis of him than it is of, say, David Edelstein, of whom, until recently (when he has occasionally filled in for Ebert), I only knew as a voice on NPR. I enjoy his reviews, but I don't know him like I do Ebert. Even though I really don't know Ebert...

[To be continued on Sunday...]

The Shark Film Office: Shark Hunter (2001)

Shark Hunter
Dir: Matt Codd // 2001 [DVD]
Cinema 4 Rating: 4

HOW TO (Attempt to) MAKE THE CASE FOR A FILM CALLED SHARK HUNTER THAT JUST HAPPENS TO STAR ANTONIO SABATO, JR.

1. First, WATCH Shark Attack, Shark Attack 2, Blue Demon, Deep Blue Sea, Shark Attack 3: Megalodon, Jaws 2, Jaws 3, Jaws 4: The Revenge, Blood Surf, Megalodon, and Spring Break Shark Attack. In fact, watch just about any film released since Jaws, outside of Jaws, that has even the faintest trace, like blood in the water, of shark footage in it. Pay especial attention to Shark Attack 3: Megalodon. Then watch Jaws once again, not just to remind yourself of what a great shark movie is (as if you needed reminded that there is only one), but also because it is just that damn cool.

2. Then, SEE Shark Hunter. Fight your way initially through the horribly produced "flashback" footage of the lead character's "happy" childhood (this footage occurs over the far too ponderous credit sequence; I'm not sure which one makes the other seem even longer than it would seem originally), and get to the opening attack. No, there's nothing special to it, but you do get the fleeting sight of a dorsal fin the size of William "Refrigerator" Perry and the top quarter of the starring Megalodon's body as it crashes through the water at the lead character's family yacht, that we just naturally assume was smashed into splinters as the kid's parents disappeared into the Meg's tummy. We assume this because we don't really see any of this happen. The next sight we see is the aftermath, with the kid, who will grow up to be played by Antonio "Calvin Klein Underwear Model" Sabato, Jr., bobbing helplessly in the ocean inside a floatation tube, which giant sharks apparently don't go for, even though it just took down an entire yacht. Baby Sabato is left whimpering and shivering, and presumably with far more filling his underwear than just his junk. This never goes over very well when you are out on the catwalk.

3. DEAL immediately with the fact that Sabato's character becomes a super-brained submersible expert and college professor. If you can't, then you must stop watching. Sabato's emotional range in this flick runs the gamut from grimacing while grappling with internal angst to outwardly pissed-off at everyone in his path, but if you just simply accept he has thoughts outside of what pose he does next, and "Boy, those girls on Melrose Place were way hotter than the blonde I'm stuck with in this one," then you will go far in watching this film. Well, not far exactly, but you will get considerably more enjoyment out of the experience.

4. SETTLE into Shark Hunter as it transforms into The Abyss with a seventy-foot prehistoric shark instead of benevolent Day-Glo aliens. Watch Sabato as he enters the bathysphere that he designed, only to be met predictably by the wary and impatient crewmembers, every one of them with the same chip on their shoulders, as if they popped a can of Pringles Personality Cliché Chips and passed them around the ship. (They stick best to your clothes if you get the ones with ridges.) As these things go, they have wedged themselves into the ship, considering it their home, and not so eager to hand it over to the guy who built it. Watch Sabato prove over and over again that he knows more about the ship than they ever will combined, and watch as they battle him over this every time. Hello? He's the friggin' designer! Cut him some slack and pass along a heapin' helpin' of hospitality and reverence, if you don't mind. After all, he managed to design and build the thing while still having the burden of being portrayed by Antonio Sabato, Jr. Respect...

5. ADMIT to yourself that for relatively low-budget CGI effects, the ones used in this film are, in their modest way, actually far better and more effective than the ones used in bigger productions like Deep Blue Sea. Sure, everything is all murky-looking, but then look at 300. You could say, "Well, that was by design," but why can't that be true here as well? Certainly the brown-and-gray color palette of the overall film is intended on some level to match the output of the animators. It's a different approach to intentional design than 300 (where they attempted to replicate the look and feel of the graphic novel source material, to great success), but it works in the context of the film. And for one of those rare moments in modern movies, a CGI creature actually seems, for the most part, to have some sense of weight to its body and earthbound speed limitations, as opposed to being far too fast to be even remotely believable. Yeah, it still doesn't feel fully like the shark inhabits the same universe as the actors, but that would be a hard sell anyway, because...

6. ...One has to ACCEPT the fact that hardly any actors actually get wet in this shark vs. submersible fight to the death. This is because of the dry-for-wet underwater sequences used in much of the film, shot to make it seem as if the deep sea participants are actually submerged in thousands of feet of water when they are actually studio-bound and drier than your Grandma's panties in an Easy-Bake Oven. (Ask your older brother why they are there...) It is a noble attempt, and works to some degree here and there, but most people who have signed up to watch a shark flick are going to be disappointed, wanting to see shark teeth sinking into human flesh over and over. To do this, the shark and the people generally have to get in the same element. To actually get a shark attack in this film without dropping some bodies in the soup, our Meg does a one-up on the biogenetically jury-rigged psycho-sharks from Deep Blue Sea and comes up throught the submersible's moon-pool, scarfing down one of the crewmembers, who may as well have been wearing a red shirt from the moment the film started. If anyone was going to get it, besides the Eurotrash bossman of this expedition, it would be this guy. Unfortunately, the humongous shark can (or needs to) only fit the front half of his head through the tiny moon-pool opening, so that we get a badly jarring image of a fake shark attempting to jam his head through the hole, which matches horribly with everything else in the shot.

7. However, take the rest of the film to CHERISH the good things that Shark Hunter brings us: while brimming with some character clichés (though what movie doesn't? It is a very rare thing...), the movie does have enough gumption to try and not follow the well-dogpaddled shark movie path for much of its length. It is not a kill-by-kill flick, which turns the majority of the sharks in these films into nothing more than a slasher with a lateral line. I sympathize with those who might get this disc because that shark-slasher vibe is precisely what they are looking for, but shouldn't filmmakers learn to use this creature for far more than this angle? Yes, the mighty Jaws had that approach, but it started it (and sadly, didn't end it). So, give the producers of Shark Hunter credit for trying something a little different, even if they had to coerce another underwater sub-genre over to morph together with the shark attack one to do it.

8. GIVE THANKS to whatever you might believe in that there isn't a mad scientist trying to mutate the shark into a government weapon or some such nonsense, a residual effect of shark movies ever since Deep Blue Sea. (I suppose this gene-splicing bent also owes itself to real-word timeliness as well.) This movie is very direct. It's basically, "Hey, there's a Megalodon!" "No, there isn't -- oh shit! There is!" "We have to kill it!" "No, we have to study it -- oh shit! We have to kill it!," several times over. Pretty straightforward, and played mostly straight -- except the film doesn't want to finish it straight. As much as I hate to give away that there is a twist ending, there is... and the people that will like it are the type that swing that way, and the people that won't... well, they live in a constant fairy tale world anyway. There's no fixing these people. If they were fit to wear Antonio Sabato's shorts (and who is, really? Probably not Antonio now...), they would know what has to be done, and that the movie has to go the way that it does. It's what actually makes the film watchable in retrospect, giving it a little more oomph than it would have if it played completely by the sub-B-movie rules.

9. Lightly, but only lightly, since the film is not that good, BLESS the DVD gods that this film is available on disc. This way, if you must put yourself through seeing it, don't do it on the Sci-Fi Channel. Not because there is really anything except for a word or two that gets cut out of the TV version, but because the channel puts in so many commercials, the two hours you spend to watch 94 minutes (which are actually edited to far less) feels like three hours and twenty. And no one has figured out how to get around that plot device, except by renting or buying it. I insist that you do the former, but be warned that this is no classic in hiding -- not even close. But the film overall is far above the usual output in these things, at least from a dramatic standpoint and somewhat from a technical one. You could do worse, and there is far, far, far worse out there. It's sad when someone can look at a film of the level of Shark Hunter and proclaim that it is arguably in the top ten fictional shark-based films around, maybe even top five, but that's what happens when a sub-genre has so little going for it outside of its progenitor. Except for having sharks, of course...

Psychotronic Ketchup: The Voodoo Island of Lesbos (Shhh... don't tell your parents...)

Voodoo Island
Dir: Reginald Le Borg // United Artists, 1957 (TCM)
Cinema 4 Rating: 3

Last week, Jen and I were flipping through the cable guide on the DVR to find out if there was anything worth recording over the next few days. Naturally, I stopped by TCM to see what was coming up, both that night and the next. To my surprise, I stumbled upon what I thought was a night full of generally excellent horror films: The Uninvited, The Haunting, The Seventh Victim and The Picture of Dorian Gray. But, in the middle of this decidedly higher-brow fright fare, there sat an odd title indeed: Voodoo Island, a Boris Karloff B-flick from 1957, which from all of the accounts that I have seen or read is not even good enough to be considered a middling attempt at zombie horror. Since I personally had never seen the film, I had no real choice but to record the film for a later viewing, but I was left wondering whether I had just heard wrong about the film, and that it did indeed merit its inclusion in this field of far more austere flicks, or if there was simply an insane programmer running amok at TCM.

It turns out neither course was correct. Voodoo Island is a crappy film, and even worse, a mostly boring and confusedly crappy one. But, it was being shown that particular night on TCM with those far, far better selections for a very good reason, and not due to the shaky hand of Mr. Crazed Programmer: the night was one of several that TCM was devoting to a film festival on Mondays and Wednesdays in June called Screened Out, which showed films that displayed representations of gay and lesbian characters, influences or stereotypes in them, hidden from the censors or otherwise. Once I saw the opening promo before this film, the other titles shown on that particular night made sense to me instantly. But Voodoo Island? Even if it indeed has gay or lesbian imagery, is this enough to allow it to be shown with the rest of these films? My resources really didn't say anything at all about this aspect, so how provocative could it be? Here is the complete, uncut review for the film in Weldon's Psychotronic: "In one of Karloff's worst movies, he investigates the island of the title, sees some of his men turned into zombies, and discovers "women-eating cobra plants." There is a slight mention after the cast list that it was filmed in Hawaii, but that's it for details. Here's the Maltin version in his Classic Movie Guide (it no longer appears in the listings for his main guide): "Boring horror-thriller has Karloff asked by businessmen to investigate strange doings on potential motel-island resort." (A note: Lenny still gives it two stars.) If neither of these two widely cast movie books didn't pick up on the gay/lesbo vibe in the film, then how overt could this angle be?

Very, very overt in actuality. Probably the most overt lesbian behavior out of any genre film in the "classic" period. Claire Winter, played with an appropriately chilly calm by Jean Engstrom, and whose seasonal surname is remarked upon by Rhodes Reason's character for this very aspect of her nature when it blizzards down upon his advances, is the rather predatory interior decorator who only has eyes for young and pert Sarah Adams (Beverly Tyler), the computer-like assistant to the detective portrayed by Boris Karloff. Reason's Gunn, a phallic-derived name is ever there was one, puts the moves on both women in the film's fact-finding expedition and is rebuffed in differing but equally effective ways. Even after she initially shoots him down, Claire can't help but tease the poor jerk stiff. She asks Gunn for a light, with which he happily obliges, edging his shoulder as close as possible to her in the action. After she puffs away for a second, she tells him to scram and insists that she no longer has need of him.

Sarah is no easier for the guy, especially after Claire starts making her move on the brainy but emotionally unaware girl. Gunn calls Sarah a "push button control system" and a "machine" for her personal aloofness, at least towards men as he calculates, but he needn't have afraid. In true horror fashion, Claire will be punished triply for her assumed sluttiness (she is the one who decides to go skinny-dipping), her homosexuality, and also for daring to come between the hero and the ingenue. She is doomed to die the moment she first lights up in the film and casts her eyes on Sarah. Whether or not the fact she betrays no remorse over her behavior plays a part in this death, or it is simply the machinations of filmmakers who will go to a certain point only with their provocativeness, but no further, is hard to tell. But certainly, the lust triangle between Claire, Sarah and Gunn is the only thing that distinguishes or gives any interest to this film at all.

Which is sad, because there are a couple of good moments in this film, outside of the lesbian intrigue. It starts out amusingly actually, with a voodoo doll in the guise of the great Karloff getting pinged in the noggin with a voodoo pin. The resulting sound effect and font of the graphics makes this begin like a horror comedy, but this is a grandly misleading impression, as there is basically zero comic relief in the film, not even a character who stands in for such a concept. The film even tries to trick us into thinking we are getting a slow flyover of the island, but anyone even casually familiar with the properties of water can tell instantly we are looking closely at a model of the island from which the camera will eventually pull away to reveal a room filled with people overlooking it. Karloff does what he can with a humorlessly written role, but the camera never even seems to care that he is in it, and there are large gaps where the viewer forgets he is in the film as well.

And then there are the carnivorous plants, which never seem all that threatening, which is a shame since the film pretty much does away with its zombie theme about halfway through. When it comes time to let the plants shine as the villains, they are clearly not up to the task, even if they do manage to kill "Claire the Hetero-Threatening Lesbian" (how dare she?!) as they are scripted to do. However, the film's sole successful horrific scene comes courtesy of this plant life on the island, when a couple of small native girls playfully wander too close to the opened leaves of one plant. It is a scene that, had I seen it as a child, would have guaranteed that I would never venture near a garden for the rest of my youth. The plant's giant fronds close over one of the children (who actually seems to fall down into the monster) and swallows her whole. The scene is far enough removed from the unremarkable action of the rest of the film to actually be surprising when it happens. This death is witnessed by one of the research party's wayward members, and the horror of this vision causes him to crack up and literally turn into a zombie. Wow... didn't know that was how the whole zombie thing happened. I'd always heard it was a drug. Or maybe some mystical voudoun spell.

Or bad movies like Voodoo Island...

Kael, Kael, Fire and Snow! (Part 2 of 2)

(Continued from yesterday...)

Her reaction to my beloved Star Wars? She trashed the thing. Savaged it. She dismissed the film as "the new cultural puritanism"; she mocked Lucas writing, saying he had the "tone of bad movies down pat"; she ridiculed the cardboard characters and cartoonish action. Like any reviewer, she was neither right nor wrong, merely opinionated. But, I didn't understand that then. I really didn't accept that people could have opinions that ran counter to my own personal beliefs, and I seriously believed that their inclusion within the same brain that bore my own would damage my psyche in some monumental fashion. I took her broadside against Star Wars as a both a personal attack and as a threat against all humanity. I railed against her. I threw the magazine across the room. And then I read her review again. I probably even threw it again before I returned it to Mr. Brooks. And then I asked him if I could have the copy, which he eventually relented to me. When I later ran across Kael's name in the card file at the local library (of course, I had to do this), I found her books and tore into them. And thus began a life of seeking out the disparate critiques of a wide swath of reviewers.

I read Ebert, Schickel and Ansen. Agee, Canby and Crowther. Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme. I bought a used copy of New York Magazine's resident critic John Simon's Movies on Film, and ran into a guy who never seemed to enjoy any movie ever. At least, he wasn't saying so on paper. But, gosh, he could make the language of the dour sing so beautifully as he put a film down. (It often seemed as if he was being bothered too much to leave the cocktail party, let alone set down his martini long enough to write a mere film review.) Simultaneously, there were non-film influences in my life: I had taken to reading Rolling Stone and Creem, when I could get them past my father (my mother didn't give a rat's ass what I read, as long as I was reading); I started to delve into the history of music at roughly the same moment as film, and the two types of reviews became rather inseparable in my mind. I would occasionally get a glimpse of the whatever-he-could-get-enhanced bugfuck energy of Lester Bangs, who purposefully set out to change the language of his realm of criticism all by his sad and declining lonesome. (Seeing as his style led to a to-this-day unceasing avalanche of copycat leaners, but no true inheritors who have taken it to the next mount, I would say he was only partially successful.)

You can bring Hunter S. and Ellison (Harlan, that is... from whom I graciously swiped the highly poetic term bugfuck) into the equation as well, both of them blowing different quadrants of my brains in multiple directions, only to have them crawl worm-like, in minute bloody shards of gray matter, back to me, allowing them to coalesce into something resembling a minor form of wit. They, along with Kael, more than anyone else, are responsible for my youthful interest in anything outside of a comic book, pulp novel or the television. Thompson allowed me to begin wondering about politics and society as a whole (plus, he was goddamned hilarious); Ellison, whether through his vibrant novellas or his angry young-"old man" television and film reviews, had me thinking about social responsibility and change, at the same time as teaching me about ego run amok on its own teetering axis. These three more than anyone affected my interest in writing, in much the same way that John Doe and Exene would eventually teach me that punk, though I already knew it as the sometimes home for the would-be social liberator (and always the refuge for the self-righteously angry or pose-needy, or both), could also be the home for the true poet. There were those who wrote mere reviews as a matter of process, as a job. And then there were those who, whether for a job or not, just flat-out wrote and what they wrote just happened to end up as reviews. What was important was that they were writing and why and how they wrote it.

This is not on purpose, my friends. There is no grand plan. There is no job search in Schmuckityburg, USA and a nervous reply to a classified that says "Lowly Film Reviewer Wanted". I'll take such a job if it proves to be where my life is going at the moment, and if I actually were considered to be up to the task, but this is something that just is. Where the interest lies, so go my pen and myself. I've never been quiet -- I've been an overly verbose jerk for much of my life -- but I pulled the ribbon from out of the Selectric a long time before I should have, and since I moved away from everything I knew, I sensed it was time to put the ribbon back. Even if the Selectric has since morphed into a PowerMac, and all of my #2 pencils are only being used to hold Jen's hair in place in an improvised situation.

Formed by chance and luck, opportune connections and a dogged pursuit of whatever seemed interesting. Taking everything that has ever been mashed into my stew, tasting it, and regurgitating the parts that haven't spoiled out into a new form on the screen before me. Perhaps, like Bangs, I am interested in developing my own language of criticism. Such attempts most often fail miserably, but why not take the chance? You have to keep things interesting for yourself. Why not try? Am I doing anything else with my time? But if I were to forge on with this possibly Quixotic quest, what form should this language take? Well, that's the chief reason why one writes in the first place, and why one reads as a result: the sense of discovery. Stay tuned...

Kael, Kael, Fire and Snow! (Part 1 of 2)

Assume that I am just a guy mad for the movies, and one who just likes to write about movies, and you would find yourself with a negative mark. Assume from the usual subject matter of this site that I have regard only for a select pair of genres of film, and you would find yourself with yet another demerit. Think the next fourteen things you are thinking, and you will have a start on your fourth handful of incorrect assumptions.

By virtue of the fact that I have multiple blogs on movies and animation, some people have asked if I want to be a film critic when I grow up again (a qualifier that I throw in for free in the conversation), and I have laughed at them and told them "No" on every single occasion. I have defused the question normally by stating my usual case of the at of blogging as a mere writing exercise, which is mostly true. I explain my choice of material as simply being something at which I have a certain accumulated knowledge, "So, why not write about something I know?" But if I were to carry on as if these were the sum total of my purpose in trundling warily down the avenue of film criticism, then I would be the third worst kind of liar. (The first two are presidents and priests...) Naturally, I am doing this because of an interest in film criticism, but I've never wanted to become a film critic as suggested by the popular phrase "film critic" and as practiced in the largely ignored reviews within newspapers and magazines. Sure, being largely ignored is a goal of mine (and I feel that I have a solid 42 years of experience and success in that endeavor), but I write what I write because I simply cannot help it. It is what I am, what I am interested in writing, and this impulse was formed long, long ago.

I have been reading film books regularly and deeply since I was a teenager. Literally hundreds of books on film criticism and film history. Hitting the library at the age of thirteen or so, I first became enthralled by a series of simple frame-by-frame film breakdowns edited by Richard Anobile, and it was here, not on the screen, that I fell in love with Hitchcock's Psycho (which I didn't see for another five years or so, when CBS showed it late one Sunday night) and Keaton's The General, pouring over each image with the sort of attention that some of my friends at that time gave to their father's Playboy and Penthouse collections. (Not that I was lacking in interest in that department either.) Likewise, I sharpened my love for the Marx Brothers via his book Why A Duck?, which laid out their most famous scenes, including dialogue, in a most appealing way, and it was here on the printed page, in a VCR and cable-deprived era, having only seen Animal Crackers at that point, where I became a true devotee of Groucho, Harpo and Chico.

And then I hit the actual literature surrounding film hidden within the library. I grew fascinated by Pauline Kael, whose every carefully hewn syllable made me long to see any film about which she wrote. Never mind that she disliked a good portion of them, and never mind that she seemed to have her own private agendas championing certain directors, genres and films (we all do); I wished to have a chance to see every film she reviewed because the tone of her writing imparted the true magic within the cinema: that fervent need to sit in a darkened theatre, flush with anticipation, and waiting for that certain thrill that comes when a filmmaker exceeds the viewer's expectations. But one cannot judge on one's successful trips to the cinema alone, and it was in her disappointments that I truly became fascinated with Ms. Kael. I read her books Reeling and Going Steady stem to stern, over and over at that time, keeping them out for weeks. These were primers of film for me, but the truth was that I had seen only about four of the movies described in their pages at that tender age. And all on television, cut up and slammed through with annoying commercials. For all I knew, she was making most of these films up and her review collections were nothing more than an elaborate parody of the film business and criticism in general. But the films were all too real, as were the reviews, and she set me off films that I would never have considered seeing if she hadn't written about them. Last Tango in Paris seemed like something from Mars to me, but I knew that I wanted to see it, merely from her reviewing it. (I have seen it since then and… eh…)

Before her books, though, was my first look at Kael's home periodical The New Yorker (and, therefore, my intro to Kael) via my English teacher. My interest in film in 1977-78 stemmed from the fact that Star Wars was all the rage, and I was purchasing every publication that even just put an ad for the film in it. I had magazines, I had comics, I had blueprints of the droids and spaceships in the film, I had a portfolio of prints from the original Ralph McQuarrie production paintings, and I had the original paperback version (the elusive purple McQuarrie cover, which I still own, along with the rest of my Star Wars paraphernalia from that period), which I purchased and read several months before the movie even came out. My teacher, Mr. Brooks, knew of my obsession with the film, and naturally was aware of how much I read. He threw his copy of The New Yorker at me and said, "You should read what this reviewer said about your movie. She hates it." (For the record, Mr. Brooks loved the movie, but did feel free to lecture us all on the pop-cultural and literary footnotes contained within the film.) I was floored by his revelation that this person dared to blaspheme in this manner, mainly because I had no conception that anyone could EVER dislike Star Wars! Mater-freaking Star Wars! (To be continued tomorrow...)

V For Voluminous: Book of the Dead

Book of the Dead: The Complete History of Zombie Cinema (2005)
by Jamie Russell
FAB Press | 320 pages

I have umpteen books in my library detailing the histories of just about any genre -- OK, maybe not chick flicks or romance -- but otherwise, I am doing just fine. Even when it comes to sub-genres, I have a few select volumes on various subjects (kaiju, aliens, slapstick, German expressionism, etc.), but never before did I consider that I would require an entire volume detailing the history of zombies and the undead (sometimes two very different things) in my collection.

Hell, I never even considered that I would want an entire book on zombie cinema in my home. This is based on my perception of the people that I know who are deeply into zombie films. Outside of my pal Aaron -- aka The Working Dead, who does have considerable critical faculties (check his blog out by clicking here) -- most of my acquaintances who thrive on zombie flicks pretty much just outright love anything with a zombie in it. Sensing this might be the case for someone perversely intent on filling 300-plus pages on the subject, please understand my reticence, and outright lack of consideration, in this regard.

Unbelievably, a pair of trips to the super-scrubbed squeaky-clean Downtown Disney changed my mind on this matter. Just enough time for a quick five-minute perusal at Compass Books, right before going to a film in the adjacent theatre, left me swiftly scanning the entertainment section, where I saw my first copy of Book of the Dead by Jamie Russell. Subtitled The Complete History of Zombie Cinema, the book's grimly beckoning cover (portrayed at right) naturally made me pick it up. Thanks to the intriguing pair of hair-bedecked skulls with glowing yellow eyes peeking out of their graves, I had to check it out to see if perhaps I would be proven wrong by my long-ingrained belief about the zombie-obsessed.

Here's the first shocker: that this book is allowed within two miles of Disneyland. Don't get me wrong: I'm glad it was there, and it certainly proved me wrong (which provides the second shocker). A fairly good-sized volume (320 pages, heavy paper, 7-1/4"x10"), even a cursory glance at the book revealed a well-researched and seemingly thorough trip through the nearly eighty -- yes, that's right -- eighty-year history of zombie films, from Bela Lugosi's White Zombie (1932) on down to Romero's Land of the Dead. Flipping through the book, I found two incredibly generous sections of garish color plates, showing innumerable classic and non-classic zombie movie posters and some wonderfully bloody scenes. And finally, it has a comprehensive filmography, not necessarily (as the author suggests) a "complete" one, but built on the movies that make up the referenced films in the text, including some that are not specifically "zombie" films, such as Romero's The Crazies, but ones that are important to the discussion of the subject peripherally. Nor did the author seek to maintain a full list of films; indeed, mere minutes after getting the book home, I discovered that Richard Elfman's Shrunken Heads was nowhere to be found in the book, despite involving both voodoo and the living dead. (Maybe the next edition, eh?) Despite my delight with this initial look at the contents, I did not buy the book. After my allotted time expired, it was off to the movies for Jen and I, but I did mark the title down in my notebook to remind myself to seek it out at a later date.

That later date came during my next trip to Compass, and after zipping once more through the book's contents before we hit Ocean's Thirteen, I at last purchased Book of the Dead (which is a tad expensive at a nickel under thirty bucks) while waiting for Jen to get off work to join me. It was an absolute joy to read the book while standing around Disneyland, with a very bloody ghoul hanging about on the back cover, grabbing the odd stare from disturbed mothers as they passed by me. (You can take what I mean by the phrase "disturbed mothers" any way you wish. I meant them all...) Certainly there are books within Compass which might not be exactly "family" material, but in a bookshop that is half devoted to children's fare, to find this volume, with its graphic depictions of gore and nudity, couched between the latest Roger Ebert effort and, inexplicably, a half-dozen books on Audrey Hepburn (did I miss something recently?), and sitting out prominently on a shelf at the eye level of a five-year-old certainly caught me by surprise. I'm not demanding they don't carry such things -- I readily encourage that they do -- I was just surprised to find it there, since they tend to only carry bestsellers in most categories, or the latest in mainstream-safe blather.

Reading the book at home has proven an exhaustive effort. Beginning with William Seabrook's seminal zombie travel opus The Magic Island, the book that made zombie talk an American fad in the early part of the 20th century, Russell breaks down each film in his narrative in such detail and with attention to their metaphorical implications that it becomes almost necessary to stop reading and review the actual films oneself before continuing forward with one's reading. I have seen White Zombie a handful of times, but I still found myself revving up my copy to make sure I had not seen a different film than the one of which Russell speaks. Suffice to say that Russell has turned out to be a very astute guide through most of the movies thus far, and while the short film reviews might come up a little more scant on detail than I wished, Russell is not one to give an easy pass to a film just because he is a hardcore fan of the subgenre. It turns out Russell is much like me: deeply in love with a couple handfuls of these films, and more than willing to sternly (though sometimes lovingly) critique those that fall short of his standards. Also, kudos must be given to Russell for including any number of zombie-oriented pornographic titles in his book, which helped toward showing me that he has left no stone unturned in his search for as many zombie films as possible, even if it might have something icky underneath it. One cannot be afraid of the icky when discussing zombies. Or if one orders a book on them for a Disney-locked bookstore. (Either their book buyer knows full well what he is doing, or he doesn't haven't a clue. Or maybe both.)

So, now I have a book in my library about zombie films, and I am happy with this. My fears of being trapped inside a book by an uncritical zombie nut have abated. Most of my friends, though, will have zero interest in seeking out or even paying for this book, but I didn't write this review for them. It is directed at two of my friends specifically. Andrea and Aaron: this book is for you. Don't delay in its immediate purchase. Shouldn't be hard to find... the dead do walk the earth, and they don't buy books like this. They buy Tim LaHaye books and Celine Dion CDs...

Arrested By the Police (A Pun 27 Years in the Unmaking, Sad to Say...)

When I woke up at 6am Monday morning, I didn't even know that The Police -- yes, those The Police, currently in the middle of a monstrous reunion tour after not doing so for 23 years -- were coming to California, let alone playing in Anaheim. By 9:30am that morning, I did know, thanks to Jen calling me from work, informing me as to this detail. Following an affirmative to a certain question she asked of me, by 9:40am, we had tickets to go see them at the Honda Center at 7:30 on Thursday night. The only problem? Jen had to work until 8pm, so I would have to go there first and get our seats and wait for her to arrive, hopefully in time for Sting not to have started his hooligan-style shouting to the crowd. Whatever... there are buses to catch, and there was no way, now that I had tickets within reach, that I was going to miss this thing.

As it turned out, Jen switched out her day off with someone else at the Park, which meant we could now actually have a real date night on Thursday, which is an exceedingly rare commodity these days given our differing schedules. (Our two days off together this weekend past was the first time that has happened, barring sickness, in several months.) Dinner, however, had to be a lot lighter this time, since I have changed my lifestyle habits in the last two weeks: eating much smaller portions at each meal, eating those smaller portions every couple of hours, eating much slower, cutting out soda completely at home and at work, and getting back on an exercise regimen. So, since I had to have food that was both light and easy to break into two smaller meals, we ended up at Panera for sandwiches, and since my meal was actually finished in about ten minutes (only half the turkey sandwich and no sides), we had about an hour and a half to kill until the show.

My boss saw the band play in L.A. at the Staples Center the night before, but even before that he said his wife had gotten access to the stage notes and found out the band would take the stage at 8:45pm. We based our casual stroll towards the Honda Ponda on this, and relaxed following our meal by spending our idle time at Barnes and Noble, where, as usual, I spent far too much money. But, it had to be done -- after all, there were new Wilco and White Stripes discs to get. We finally ended up finding a sweet VIP parking spot completely by accident (we did have to pay $20 for it, though) and practically just walked into the building. Since I didn't take the time to learn the Honda Center's seat arrangements, I just thought we were going to end up three miles from the front of the stage, but it turned out, just like at McCartney two Novembers ago, we ended up in the upper tier but looking right over the stage itself. McCartney we were able to see from the front slightly; here, we ended up just behind the Police and at stage left. But, since there was a huge video screen just below our eye level, we got the opportunity to see all angles of the show. To a certain extent, I would almost end up with seats like this than with seats in the human stew in front of the stage. It actually serves to make the show more multi-dimensional.

When we walked in, there was a sign informing us "This concert is being filmed as part of a motion picture," and then it went into the whole waiving of our rights as human beings, etc., etc., images, etc. What this meant was that there was a track laid down below the front of the stage where two cameras rolled back and forth throughout the show. Additionally, there were numerous cameramen roaming about both around the stage and in the crowd, which made the show extra fun, at least for me. We checked out all of this after we finally found our seats in the utter darkness of the hall, since we walked in with the opening act blaring away already. They were called Fiction Plane, a fact I only ascertained due to their being a giant picture of their new album broadcast on a video screen while they played their melange of Nirvana-slash-Pearl Jam-sadly, slash- a little Creed and slash-, yes, slash-The Police. Every once in a while, the singer hit a note that sounded eerily reminiscent of a certain famous singer we were about to see in a matter of minutes, but we had no idea that he was actually Sting's oldest son (from his first marriage), Joe Sumner. All we did was make fun of the fact that he ended all five songs we saw him perform by crawling on top of the drum riser, climb on top of the amps, and then jump off in time with the last note. Each... and... every... time. We did, however, note that they sounded "alright". (It was the next morning that I found out who he was on the Wiki.)

The Police themselves took the stage promptly at 8:45pm, and naturally the crowd went apeshit, obscuring the first two lines of Message In A Bottle via their incapability to contain themselves. I refer to the crowd as a separate entity from myself, but here is the solid lead truth: I was shitting my pants as much as anyone. Just before they came on, in the last spare moments when we could still hear what the other one was saying, I said to Jen, "You do realize that I have been waiting since 1979-1980 to see these guys. That's 27, 28 years I have been waiting." Jen's reply: "I was two then," and then a laugh at the situation. "Barely two, probably." Ah, that age difference again. It rarely rears its head, actually, but when it comes to music and movies, it pops up all the time.

Let's assume hypothetically that the Police were unbelievably shitty that night. Given the swell of emotion bursting out of my every pore, would I really have been able to tell? And farther down the line, would I tell you if they were? Well, I have a reporter's to do so, but this is all I will impart of the negative: Sting started one song wrong at one point, and guitarist Andy Summers gave him a wicked, teasing glare and shake of his head; Sting forgot the words in King of Pain (at the second point where he was supposed to sing "There's a flag-pole rag and the wind won't stop", he stiffed on the moment, pooled his resources and managed to get out "There's a black-winged gull with a broken back," a line from much deeper in the song, and then shook his head and smirked); and there were at least three points in the show where the band really didn't come together, as if all of them were off on different tangents, and not in a way where it could be written off as some sidewinding free jazz tossoff. They were just missed connections. These are the sort of things that get bands kiss-offs on concert boards, often from people who go to a zillion shows and thing they've seen it all or just want to shit on everybody else's good time. I know people who have gone to shows, and if there was one thing that went wrong technically, it ruined the entire time for them. These people must be stopped.

But, let's speak of the emotion of the moment, stemming sufficiently both from me and, from what I could gather, every one around us. Because the show was not about precision or about musicianship or about how hard they rocked. Yes, Stewart Copeland was incredible -- in fact, my favorite part of the show -- and all three of the Police actually are excellent musicians, but it must be pointed out that this is a group that has played around a dozen songs together in two decades time. It will take a while to get that "group timing" back, and I think the bulk of the audience, who didn't go in with an agenda, accepted that fact. No, this event was about love, from the audience to a band that had gone away after only six years and five very good-to-excellent albums, and that had left a legacy of some very beloved songs. (Personally, I wish they had done Spirits in the Material World, an especially egregious exclusion, but I was happy they did play Driven to Tears, so I will call it even. Though they could have also done Demolition Man, Man In A Suitcase, Tea in the Sahara, Oh My God, Murder by Numbers or Hungry for You.... so, where do you leave off?)

Sure, there are people who are going to complain about the ticket prices (we paid $95 a shot for what I consider "stealth good seats," but this is based on my need to not be elbow-to-elbow with the great unwashed in a possible mob rush situation), but this is mostly not the fault of the band. The high ticket trend is something that must be fixed in our culture as a whole, especially with ticket brokers, i.e. what used to be called "scalpers", making shows impossible to see after five minutes of sales unless you've got five bills per on you. Besides, I had 27, 28 years of waiting for this band; add on surcharges and parking, and my ticket cost just over four bucks per year. Now, that's a true emotional investment.

So, a toast to The Police for their effort: Here's to hoping the tour goes well enough that these guys get over their slight bickering (Copeland has posted numerous swipes at their inconsistency on his blog), and find enough enjoyment in the experience that they will consider giving us some new music from The Police. Because that is the ultimate payoff for the fans in all of this. If you love the band or its music, even in a small measure, this is what you should wish to crawl out of the wreckage. Now, let's work on that Rockpile reunion...

For those interested, the playlist for the concert:
(8:45pm - enter stage)
* Message in a Bottle
* Synchronicity II
* Walking on the Moon
* Voices in My Head // Don’t Stand So Close To Me (medley)
* Driven to Tears
* Bed’s Too Big Without You
* Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic
* Truth Hits Everybody
* Wrapped Around Your Finger
* De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da
* Invisible Sun
* Walking in Your Footsteps
* Can’t Stand Losing You
* Roxanne

ENCORE ONE
* King of Pain
* So Lonely

ENCORE TWO
* Every Breath You Take

ENCORE THREE
* Next to You
(10:50pm - exit stage)

Recently Rated Movies #50: My Own MTV (You Know, The Way MTV Should Be... If They Actually Played Decent Music)

loudQUIETloud: A Film About the Pixies
Dir: Stephen Cantor & Matthew Galkin // 2006 [DVD]
Cinema 4 Rating: 7

The Pixies Sell Out: 2004 Reunion Tour
Cinema 4 Rating: 8

Bumping about loudly through Netflix, I realized that I really haven't seen many of the current string of live concert DVDs that have hit the shelves in the last few years. The thing is, I would have killed for this much band access back in the '80s and early '90s, but video releases were both somewhat haphazard and far more expensive back then in those rental-focused times. The disc changed everything, especially the buyer's market. Now, if I get one DVD about Wilco, there's likely another one around the corner. There also seems to be a cottage industry built around the reformation of the Pixies, with at least three titles that I have noticed bouncing around featuring footage from that surprising 2004 reunion. I clicked on one of these titles, adding it to the queue, and then felt instantly compelled to click on the suggested other title that popped up on my screen. (I guess that's why they have a feature like that... for once, it actually worked on me.)

I will have to admit out front that any band is an acquired taste. I sat in rapt attention to loudQUIETloud, lounging backstage with people who seem to need each other to create their art, at least to the level that fans and critics expect them to, but who can't say even two sincere words to each other for fear of breaking their tenuous truce. They do eventually, but how and why is intensely surprising. None of it was surprising to Jen, who has no earthly idea regarding the Pixies, couldn't pick out one of their songs in a listening station lineup, and doesn't really have the energy to get into new bands (even if they are old bands, and even if I play them all the time anyway). I started this film thinking she was doing something else, but she came out to the couch and sat down. After fifteen minutes of what she likely considered slowly dripping water torture, she asked what we were watching. She then graciously sat there until the 20-minute mark, when I quietLOUDquietly turned off the player and let her watch Seinfeld.

I watched the rest of the film the next morning while we prepared for our trip to San Diego that day, and then I played it as loudQUIETloudly as I could. Flaring past the twin forms of addiction represented by bassist Kim Deal (she also of the Breeders), who is supposedly on the mend during the film and seems like an emotional train wreck offstage, and drummer David Lovering, whose inability to deal with his father's cancer has him popping Valium not-so-secretly, we arrive at the enigma at the center of the Pixies. He is Charles Thompson, aka Black Francis, aka Frank Black, a man who, despite the fact he has released about a dozen excellent-to-good solo albums since the initial demise of the Pixies, seems as unknowable as ever. Clearly a musical genius on some level, it is amazing how a man of his size and charisma can almost melt into the background in some of these scenes, so uncommunicative is he around most of his bandmates. He speaks in two ways, though... he will offer up a small joke here and there that the rest of the band will politely grin and laugh along with, and he will also impose a fatherly though indirect measure of moral advice when it is called for (such as in a stunning scene in the van with Lovering; it's almost an anti-intervention, so sidewinder-like does he offer a suggestion to David. He needs to take heed of it, giving his amazing blowout on drums midstage earlier in the film. It almost seems like an outtake from Spinal Tap. Incredible.)

Music-wise, the film slightly disappointed me in its selections (and the fact that many songs are cut off in the middle or begin there), but I knew I had a disc full of two hours of music from this tour on The Pixies Sell Out: 2004 Reunion Tour. Compiled from seven different tour dates, this is a true treasure trove for the devoted fan. I was still in Alaska at this point, and lamented the fact I couldn't get to Coachella for their show, but portions of it are here. While all four of the Pixies are quite proficient from a music standpoint, the ringer in the group is Joey Santiago, the quiet, unassuming family man who just happens to be a drop-dead amazing guitarist, in all aspects. This is where my eye went for the duration of the disc, watching and listening for even the smallest scrap of Santiago's stellar playing. You've heard the old cliche about making a guitar sing; here, Santiago makes us keenly aware that every element of each song in the Pixies oeuvre is stubbornly tied to the next, and that his sound is as much of a lead vocalist in the band as either Charles' or Kim's voices.

X: The Unheard Music
Dir: W.T. Morgan // 1986 [DVD]
Cinema 4 Rating: 8

Before the Pixies came along with their male-female lead dynamic, I had X. John Doe and Exene Cervenka intrigued me so much with their songs of boozers, reprobates and societal dropouts in L.A., and much of it had to do with their odd and very human form of harmonic convergence, never quite together perfectly, but perfectly together.

I had their first four albums -- Los Angeles, Under the Big Black Sun, Wild Gift and More Fun in the New World -- and was deeply in love with every song and knew them by heart. Then my buddy Dion stepped away from his Eric Clapton and Pink Floyd collection (which I, too, possessed) long enough to tell me how much he hated X when they appeared on some NBC television special and performed True Love Pt. 2, their ambitious jamming together of various twentieth century musical movements into a sort of funky stewpot. I, too, had seen the show (I don't remember what it was though) and I had to admit that I felt they did kind of suck on it. But that was X. Live, you never knew what you were going to get, but I could accept it, as I had evidence of their greatness on four discs of vinyl gold in my record vault. (It was actually a couple of milk crates at that time, but no matter.)

Still, Dion's words cut me in such a way that I became, for a while, something of a doubter of my own analytical headgear. The words were memorable enough to first throw me off in that manner for a bit, but secondly also served to make me very cautious in discussing music around the lad, known in our circle for his too cool and cynical way with a scattershot opinion. Later, I also had insight into this musically when playing my new spanking-new, hot off the presses cassette of R.E.M.'s Fables of the Reconstruction, which he said they were "Alright...if you like that sort of thing." I could not understand this, and wanted him to be gone from my sight immediately. It was as if any new music that inched within his view had to put down until it was deemed acceptable by the masses, of which he seemed to be a willing participant. I knew fully of Dion's penchant for abstract jokiness, but the truth was that in both instances it didn't seem so much of a put-on, as it was a stance against progress.

So, the opportunity hits me to catch up with X via this DVD. Yes, I fell out with them along the way, but they made it easy -- the ill-thought-out Wild Thing single; a couple of subpar final albums; the usual band member changes and breakup. I got their country offshoot albums performed as The Knitters and liked them, and have grabbed a terrific John Doe solo album here and there along the way. As a group, X still looms large in my heart, but its a different heart I have now. It's changed so much since I fell in love with them long ago. It's seen a lot of the things since then -- hell, a lot of the thing they were singing about long before I really knew what they were singing about. Listening to them now, older, more cautious, more experienced, more heartbroken, and now living closer to the area where they lived and learned, I have come to the realization that I have finally grown up enough to really understand them. They may have been performing for a young crowd, but they were actually secretly speaking to the me that is now. The me that has seen some shit and shed some tears. Not the easy teenage tears of tender years, but tear-your-universe apart sadness. Not as severe as most people I know -- especially the ones who dwell on their own drama -- no, not like those poor bastards, that's for sure. But enough to make me finally identify with characters that were only titles to me: Devil Doll, Poor Little Girl, Johny Hit and Run Paulene. I got the band then, but I really get the characters now, far past the easy hear-and-grab influence of a nineteen-year-old, and I have accepted X soulfully back into my ears and heart once more.

The movie itself. Knew about it; always wanted to catch it. Man, I'm glad I finally saw this film. And you know what?

Dion was dead wrong...

Psychotronic Ketchup: Building Disasters Upon Disasters

Beyond the Poseidon Adventure
Dir: Irwin Allen // 1979 [DVD]
Cinema 4 Rating: 4

I will leave it to a true fashion expert to take a gander at disaster-meister Irwin Allen's last feature-film directorial effort and tell me if the characters in this film would be wearing those clothes if they indeed had shown up the next day after the events which unfolded in the famous first Oscar-winning Poseidon film, made a full seven years earlier than this one. Yeah, I lived through that time, but I was too busy as a youth in that span trying to see people without clothes on to really pay attention to what they were wearing the rest of the time. I remember my brothers had some Garanimals clothing and I had some truly atrocious attire. That's about it.

Telly Savalas is in this one, and if you don't have him sized up as the heavy after the first scene in which he appears, then you have not been paying attention. Sure, he comes on all semi-nice to salvage tug captain Michael Caine (doing what he does best: acting great in horrible films; say what you will, the man is a trouper when it comes to a paycheck), but you should know right away that he's up to no good on the capsized ocean liner simply by recognition of the fact that he is Telly Savalas in a movie. (The guy played both Blofeld and Pontius Pilate... once you go up against James Bond and Jesus? That's it... you are a movie bad guy. Not even playing Kojak for half a jillion years can save you from that fate.)

It's one of those situations that Jen often yells about. Had she seen this film, she would go crazy trying to figure out why Caine and Karl Malden and Sally Field can't seem to realize that Savalas is an evil fucker from the get-go. It's an amusing variant on a game the two of us play when watching old movies and television ("Of course he betrayed them, Hon. He's Ricardo Montalban!"), but this fact only exists in the real world; in the movie, the characters usually remain oblivious of movie rules. That's why there are movies: for people to make mistakes and then correct them by the rousing finale, or at least die trying to correct them.

However, for those of you who haven't seen the movie, and who might be inclined to be mad at me for revealing this point, I have no sympathy. You should know the movie rules by this point, and if you don't see this plot turn comin' down the pike with bells and whistles and neon lights flashing out in squiggly writing, "Look! Here's the Freakin' Villain!", and all within five minutes of laying eyes on Mr. Savalas, then you have no business making babies or driving a car in this society.

Allen takes the tack of decorating this crapfest by scattering a dockcrane full of "name" thespians around the ship, and then has Caine, Malden and Field discover these new survivors as they make their way through the bowels of the ship. There is a slight sense of emotional resonance leftover from the first film when the salvage crew finds the hole where the survivors escaped and upon entering it, they pass the spot where Hackman fell down into the flames. I think it was emotional resonance, but it might have been gas. Peter Boyle acts like Peter Boyle playing a part written for Peter Boyle as a too-doting dad and ineffectual ex-sergeant. Jack Warden shows up (yay!), but he has Shirley Knight in tow, so thanks, but no thanks. Apparently the Poseidon series has a lock on Shirleys that annoy the fuck out of me; but that Knight bites it under a deluge of water also points to a trend, and evens the horror out. They also right the ship, so to speak, by throwing in a Shirley I adore: Ms. Jones, who does a very quiet but solid turn as the ship's steadfast nurse.

There is some OK acting here from some parties, but most definitely not from Mark Harmon and Veronica Hamel, future TV stars who would eventually do some good work, but who are only distinguised here by Hamel showing up in a slinky evening dress. And then there is Sally. Ms. Field probably seemed to be acting badly when this came out, but then she won the Oscar for Norma Rae (released roughly around the same time), so in retrospect, she must have actually been terrific in this, too. Nah... she's cute, but terribly annoying here, and the script doesn't help her for a second, saddling her with both the romantic lead and the comic relief role. At least, until Slim Pickens shows up. Yes, I said Slim Pickens. He hugs an expensive bottle of wine in this flick he way he rode a bomb in Strangelove. Wait a minute, maybe he actually is riding a bomb here, too.

Rixster on Flixster, Pt. 3: Abba Dabba Honeymourn

I hit the ratings board on Flixster a-runnin' and a clickin', and before twenty minutes had passed, I had rated on their little five-star scale over 204 films. As Jen and I were heading out the door to see Knocked Up, I had to force myself to stop. But, striding out to the car, the thought hit me, "Why am I rating all these movies again?" As I have mentioned, I have my main list of ratings preserved in IMDB, and something else that I have not mentioned, I even provide a link to my list of over 4,100 ratings on the Pylon. For the interested few in my latest discoveries or changes, they can read them directly on the Pylon, as well. So, there is little real purpose in my doing this movie-rating thing once more. As we sped towards our Knocked Up showing, I reflected on my decision to start clicking furiously on film after film.

I also spent the time before the previews, and the time in the car on the way home (when we weren't discussing the merits and minor disappointments of the film in which we had just delighted) thinking about the Flixster quandary, as well. What I ultimately decided was that it was a helluva lot of fun doing it, so, like masturbation or one of the drugs with which my neighbors seem to always find themselves magically inundated, one finds oneself in the position of not wanting to stop. So, I returned to Flixster the next morning to begin rating anew. And guess what happened? Clicking on the their menu's QuickRate button that is designed to allow such activity as massive impromptu clicking, I received a photo of a monkey rifling through a torn-open bag of Lay's, and it was accompanied by the following notation:

"The monkeys that pick the movies for QuickRate are taking a quick break for potato chips... and to buy (dozens) more servers to keep everything here at Flixster up and humming nice and quick-like. They'll have this feature back up on the site just as soon as they can without it slowing things down too much. In the meantime, they suggest you go to the King Kong movie page and write a glowing review - they really love that movie. Thanks for your patience!" ~The Flixster Monkeys

So there it was... I was unable to rate movies in the same manner as I had just a mere 12 hours before. As a matter of fact, it is currently about five days later, and I am still unable to do so. I must point out, though, that I could, and can, still rate movies, but only by doing it movie by movie as I happened upon or searched for them, and then, and only then, when I popped open each movie's page. But this makes what should be a quickie an incredibly time-consuming effort. As a result of this interference, I stepped back and further considered the folly of entering thousands of movie ratings on yet another site; something which I had already stopped myself from doing on Netflix previously. Apart from fixing my aforementioned Pinocchio problem, I then made sure to update the "My Favorites" film page with each of the films listed in my profile, only about a quarter of which were picked up by Flixster automatically. (I had eliminated articles such as "and" and "the" in my listing to fit more films in initially, hence the i.d. problem.)

After a short respite, though, I was back to my initial rumination: apart from it's existence as a source of mostly mindless fun, what purpose could there be in doing this again? I had, by this point, decided not to go crazy in adding film rating after film rating to Flixster, opting instead to tap a film here and there as I casually encountered them. But, something else I had done with my downtime was to go into the profiles of a couple dozen random Flixster strangers and check out the variety of films, reviews and non-reviews listed there -- some well-reasoned, some snooty, some genuine, some patronizing, and the bulk of them asinine and unthinking in either their effusion or disdain for a particular film. And I hit upon my main use for Flixster: as an access portal to a wide cross-section of movie-goers and their equally wide variety of reactions to them. But, how and why am I to use this new resource? [To be continued at a date in the near future..]

[One further note regarding Flixster: Peter Lorre's wonderfully unhinged ultimate stalker flick Mad Love (you know, with Dr. Gogol and all that) was initially released in 1935, not 1949 as stated on Flixster. I haven't looked into finding out how one can get something fixed on the service, but perhaps in the future.]

Rixster on Flixster, Pt. 2: A Wooden Foot Up the Bum

Here's the deal... I already have a couple of other places where I put up my movie ratings: first, there is the Internet Movie Database (IMDB) where I have not only rated over 4,000 movies, but I have also invested a great amount of time in storing and constructing a database for all of the information regarding the 5,000 items in my movie and television collection (now purposefully depleted to a somewhat reasonable level). I also rate movies, once in a while, in my Netflix account, but the purpose there is merely either to get them to show me new movies in which I might be interested, or because I am trying to kill a few minutes of spare time. I also have my blogs, such as the very one you are reading right now, where I have implemented my own personal ratings system -- The Cinema 4 Rating, based on 1 through 9; there are rarely "10s" in my universe -- which is used not only throughout my various blogs, but also on my underused (to this point) website, Cinema for Space Lovers.

So, what is the attraction for me to add and use the Flixster app? Why start clicking annoying little stars on yet another website? The basic reason: I have committed to using Facebook as a base of operations as far as keeping in touch with my friends, many of whom (myself included sometimes) seem to have forgotten how to construct a personal email (much in the way that people gradually stopped trying to write letters to their loved ones), but have no problem plunking down a few syllables as a quick "WTF's up!" message. (I have to agree, it is a very convenient service which these sites provide.) MySpace is simply an eyesore and far too bulky a device to operate with any feeling of ease; Facebook is inarguably cleaner in design, and arguably a more user-friendly service. I'm enjoying the heck out of it so far, as are most of the gang, I believe. And now it seemed that the coup de grace of this venture, once I added Flixster, was the bobbing into my view of the sight of a series of itsy bitsy movie posters, all lined up like tasty little cinematic cereal boxes, and all plopped onto my page via Flixster's robotic perusal of the "Favorite Movie" list in my Facebook profile.

I was overjoyed, because I didn't expect this boon to my profile page. But then, I noticed something terrible. Most friends of any sort of vintage within my life know of my love/horror since childhood of Walt Disney's Pinocchio. The movie shaped so much of my character, that even if I hated the movie (which I clearly don't), I would have to put it on my favorite movie list just because of my closeness to it. And, sure enough, there in my "Top 10" movie lineup of minute posters was Pinocchio. But it wasn't the image of the cute little animated Pinocchio standing next to Jiminy Cricket and Geppetto, dancing about together in his father's toyshop. Instead, it was the figure of a far more human-seeming Pinocchio, and one who was posing limbs akimbo in front of a red velvet curtain. And this Pinocchio was played by none other than Roberto "Life is Beautiful" Benigni...

Nothing against Benigni. Far more than many people, I get him, to a certain degree. I have seen several of his movies, and I have enjoyed, also to a certain degree, most of them. I know he has likely worn out his welcome in the Americas since his Oscar nuttiness, but I have stuck with him since Down By Law all the way through even the atrocious Son of the Pink Panther, and I will admit he is a unique talent, apart from his monstrous and unwarranted ego. And I don't want to trash his version of Pinocchio (though most have), because I have yet to see it, and chief amongst my movie rules is not to "officially" rip on a film until I have actually sat down and plowed through the damnable thing. ("Unofficially," I reserve the right to rip on something just 'cause I feel like it... nyah!)

But for his version of the famous puppet story to be the default poster for Pinocchio on Flixster smacks of a program that needs, not just my foot, but a foot from each and every decent Pinocchio fan in the world, and even the animated puppet himself, shoved up Flixster's silicon ass. (Unless, of course, Flixster enjoys that sort of thing...) Attention, Flixster: There is no more famous filmed version of the story than Disney's version. It was groundbreaking and truly shocking for its day, and testing true to my reaction as a child, apparently for many days after "its day". The Disney, not the Benigni, should be the default. I found out the reason, of course: it was the title itself. You see, Disney's version comes up as "PINOCCHIO - WALT DISNEY," while Benigni's comes up as simply the name of the puppet. Since I had only written Pinocchio on my Favorite Movie list, I was momentarily stuck with Roberto. I was just waiting with dread for a message from one of my old pals, all raring to rip on me for my inclusion of the wrong film (and now that I have mentioned it, I'm sure I will get one, probably from Sun & Immel, Inc. -- Chicago Division of the Department of Dancing Ahmids). I cursed Flixster for a while until I figured out how to maneuver about the Favorites page in the Movies application, and finally sought out the proper poster. Finally, all was right again with my Facebook, and the Roberto-Monster was vanquished for good. And then I thought, "Hmmm... maybe I'll spend the next half hour rating a couple hundred movies."

Would have been nice to do... (To be continued...)